The Liebster Award – Ich Liebe Dich

Ever wonder how many blogs there are on the Internet? Well: LOTS! Starting a blog is a breeze but keeping it going is not as easy. It’s kind of like raising a puppy: you fall in love with an adorable pup and bring it home and then every day from that day forward you’ve gotta feed your puppy, walk your puppy, and pick up its poop. It’s work!

Commitment to keep at something springs from inner resolve and passion, ’tis true, but once in awhile, it’s nice, oh so nice, to get an encouraging nod or smile. That’s why when you (hi y’all!) comment, link, twit, follow, or otherwise give a pat-on-the-back, it means an awful lot and puts a goofy smile on our mugs. A sincere compliment warms the heart, it does, and makes picking up the proverbial dog poop that much less of a pain.

That’s why here at Fig & Quince we were entirely verklempt to be one of the blogs to receive the Liebster Award from one of our very favorite food bloggers: the lovely Feed The Piglet, who is a chef, an artistic shutterbug, a fellow courgette-lover, and who continues to vex us by consistently posting tempting recipes that we want to try but just can’t keep up with.

But wait, I can hear you wondering out loud: “What in the world is the Liebster Award?” Well, the word “liebster” with its root of “liebe” (or love) means favorite in German and the award (geared towards blogs of merit with less than 200 followers) is basically a blogger-2-blogger nod of recognition, meant to encourage the new and/or smaller blogs to soldier on and keep on trucking. (I also amuse myself by thinking of it as the Sally Field “You like me! You really, really like me!” award.) To accept and pass on the award, there are rules. Of course there are! What, would you have anarchy instead?

Here are the rules:

1. Thank and link to the blogger who gave you the award. Thank you Feed the piglet!
2. Copy and paste the award in your post. Our blinged-out version is above, and the original-recipe award is here below:

3. Pick 5 other blogs with less than 200 followers to award. Leave a comment on their blog to let them know about their nominations.

This was the challenging part – to limit our appreciation to only five blogs because we have big hearts overflowing with lots of love. We are just amazing and wonderful like that. But rules are rules! For simplicity’s sake, we limited ourselves to food blogs. And finally (trumpets!) here are Fig & Quince‘s alphabetical list of the shiny and awesome food blogs we heart:

Savor the World Forging peace, love, and understanding through exploring and sharing yummy-for-your-tummy food.

Turmeric and Saffron A pioneer of the Persian cooking genre. Elegant presentation and an engaging, story-telling narrative that goes down like a dollop of ice cream. [In all probability, Turmeric & Saffron, quite a popular site, has way more than 200 followers, but she has been so amazing in her generous support of Fig & Quince that it’d be remiss not to send her a big fat kiss and hug of appreciation. In our own small-peanuts way.]

War and Yeast A young self-taught and passionate cook. She elevates the ordinary with inventive twists.

Weird Combinations Nothing weird about this awesome-sprinkled-with-more-awesome vegetarian and wine-centric blog. Nominating them is part of our clever plot to pave the way to scoring an invite to one of their wine-country jaunts or dinner parties. But pssst, don’t tell them.

And thus concludes our award ceremony. Now let’s wrap up this heart-filled piece with giving the last word to Hafiz, a revered Persian poet, who said: “Go through this world, giving love. Giving love.“

Amen!

ps If you’re counting, yes, we actually awarded this to eight and not five bloggers. What can we say, while respecting the autoritah, we are also mildly rebellious.

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